Tag Archives: down and dirty

They say those who can't do teach, but I had fun doing and teaching on this trip.

There were many enjoyable things about this last assignment to India. However, one the most enjoyable elements of the trip for me was getting the opportunity to train some of the staff of the organization I was working for to be better visual communicators and storytellers.

While everyone owned Digital SLR’s and had experimented a little with photography, none of them had ever given much thought to crafting images. Instead, like most people, they just walked around pointing their camera at things that caught their attention and taking pictures.

So over the two weeks we talked about a few core things over and over again that would help them create stronger images and visual stories. One of the things I encouraged them to do at almost every one our nightly image reviews was to experiment with different points of view. As I did this I would highlight a series of images of one subject that I shot from a variety of points of view. Like most concepts that we talked about, intellectually they got it right away, but it took a few days of reminders from me for them to actually start varying the way they shot images.

For this image I had to literally get down and dirty. The Indian villagers watching us thought it was hilarious that an American would actually lay down in the dirt!

Even for me when I am in the heat of the moment I have to remind myself to not settle for shooting a scene from just one point of view. As much as I can I will experiment with getting up above my subject, getting down low (even lying in the dirt if necessary sometimes!) and everything in between. Then at the end of the day I can look through the images I created from the variety of points of view and choose which one I feel best expresses how I was feeling and experiencing the moment and what I was trying to communicate about my subject.

I created a number of images from different points of view of this particular scene. I liked this one shot from above because I was able to get their waving hands of the kids in front and still all of the kids in the frame.

So don’t be afraid to get high, down and dirty and anything and everything in between. I am confident if you take the time and initiative to mix up the point of views from which you are shooting images, you are going to have a lot more fun and create much stronger images.

Whenever I am creating portraits of children, I like to experiment with getting down on their level.